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On a September evening in 1987, Navroze Mody, a thirty-year-old Indian man living in Jersey City, went for drinks at the Gold Coast Café, in Hoboken. Later that night, after he left the bar, he was accosted on the street by a group of about a dozen youths and severely beaten. Mody died from his injuries four days later. There had been other attacks on Indians in the area at that time, several of them brutal, many of them carried out by a group that called itself the Dotbusters—the name a reference to the bindi worn by Hindu women on their foreheads. Earlier that year, a local newspaper had published a handwritten letter from the Dotbusters: “We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I’m walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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A penthouse at Trump Park Avenue owned by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, of which the president is the exclusive beneficiary, just hit the market asking $35 million, according to public records.

Trump transferred the unit, located at 502 Park Avenue, to the trust in January, but he has been trying to sell the unit for quite a while. He first listed it in 2008 for $45 million, then raised the ask to $51 million after a renovation, before dropping it back down to $31 million. He brought it back to the market in 2013 for $45 million, but ultimately took down the listing in March 2016, when it was asking $35 million.

The 6,278-square-foot spread has four bedrooms and six bathrooms. It also features a private elevator, private terraces, panoramic views of the city, 22 arched windows, a library and a den. Nitza Zinbarg of Trump International Realty has the listing.

Trump International Realty

Trump’s trust recently sold another penthouse unit in the building to a Chinese businesswoman for $15.89 million. Ivanka Trump listed a smaller unit in the building for $4 million in December.

The trustees of the Donald Trump Revocable Trust are Donald Trump Jr. and Allen Weisselberg, the CEO of the Trump Organization, but the president retains the right to dissolve the trust at will.

Trump International RealtyTrump International RealtyTrump International RealtyTrump International Realty

NOW WATCH: This $250M mansion is the most expensive home for sale in the US — complete with a helicopter and a $30M car collection

During President Trump's first seven weeks in office, 7,594 refugees entered the US. There is also a sizable number of refugees entering the US from the six banned countries of Trump's new travel order. Now that he has signed this new order (the original was signed on January 27, 2017), it remains to be seen how many refugees from the banned countries will enter.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cost to healthcare companies for U.S. regulatory review of their products, including drugs and medical devices, would more than double under the Trump administration's proposed 2018 budget.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday proposed a 31 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, as the White House seeks to eliminate climate change programs and trim initiatives to protect air and water quality.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which pulled in about $445 million in federal funding in recent years, will see its funding eliminated under President Trump’s soon-to-be-released discretionary budget plan.

President Trump’s discretionary budget plan set to be released Thursday reportedly includes a request for $2.6 billion in funding to begin planning and building a “physical wall” along the border with Mexico along with security funding.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is unveiling a $1.15 trillion budget, a far-reaching overhaul of federal government spending that slashes a dozen departments to finance a significant increase in the military and make a down payment on a US-Mexico border wall.

Thursday's scheduled budget release will upend Washington with cuts to long-promised campaign targets like foreign aid and the Environmental Protection Agency as well as strong congressional favorites such as medical research, help for homeless veterans, and community-development grants.

"A budget that puts America first must make the safety of our people its number one priority — because without safety, there can be no prosperity," Trump said in a message accompanying his proposed budget that was titled "America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again."

The $54 billion boost for the military is the largest since President Ronald Reagan's Pentagon buildup in the 1980s, promising immediate money for troop readiness, the fight against Islamic State militants, and procurement of new ships, fighter jets, and other weapons. The 10% Pentagon boost is financed by $54 billion in cuts to foreign aid and domestic agencies that had been protected by President Barack Obama.

The budget goes after the frequent targets of the party's staunchest conservatives, eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, legal aid for the poor, low-income heating assistance, and the AmeriCorps national service program established by President Bill Clinton.

Such programs were the focus of lengthy battles dating to the GOP takeover of Congress in 1995 and have survived prior attempts to eliminate them. Lawmakers will have the final say on Trump's proposal in the arduous budget process.

The budget is set for official release Thursday morning, but The Associated Press and other news outlets obtained the document in advance.

Law-enforcement agencies like the FBI would be spared, while the border wall would receive an immediate $1.5 billion infusion in the ongoing fiscal year, with another $2.6 billion planned for the 2018 budget year starting October 1.

Trump repeatedly claimed during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall when, in fact, US taxpayers will foot the bill.

Twelve of the government's 15 Cabinet agencies would absorb cuts under the president's proposal. The biggest losers are Agriculture, Labor, State, and the Cabinet-level EPA. The Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Veterans Affairs are the winners.

More than 3,000 EPA workers would lose their jobs, and programs such as Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would tighten regulations on emissions from power plants seen as contributing to global warming, would be eliminated. Popular EPA grants for state and local drinking and wastewater projects would be preserved, however.

Trump's proposal covers only roughly one-fourth of the approximately $4 trillion federal budget, the discretionary portion that Congress passes each year. It doesn't address taxes, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or make predictions about deficits and the economy. Those big-picture details are due in mid-May and are sure to show large — probably permanent — budget deficits. Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security and Medicare and is dead set against raising taxes.

"The president's going to keep his promises" to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Trump's proposal is sure to land with a thud on Capitol Hill — and not just with opposition Democrats outraged over cuts to pet programs such as renewable energy, climate-change research, and rehabilitation of housing projects.

Republicans like Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio are irate over planned elimination of a program to restore the Great Lakes. Top Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee are opposed to drastic cuts to foreign aid. And even GOP defense hawks like Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry of Texas aren't satisfied with the $54 billion increase for the military.

Before the two sides go to war over Trump's 2018 plan, they need to clean up more than $1.1 trillion in unfinished agency budgets for the current year. A temporary catchall spending bill expires April 28; negotiations have barely started and could get hung up over Trump's request for the wall and additional border-patrol and immigration-enforcement agents, just for starters.

Some of the most politically sensitive domestic programs would be spared, including food aid for pregnant women and their children, housing vouchers for the poor, aid for special education and school districts for the poor, and federal aid to historically black colleges and universities.

But the National Institutes of Health would absorb a $5.8 billion cut despite Trump's talk in a recent address to Congress of finding "cures to the illnesses that have always plagued us." Subsidies for airlines serving rural airports in Trump strongholds would be eliminated. Also zeroed out would be funding for subsidies of Amtrak's money-losing long-distance routes and a $500-million-a-year "TIGER Grant" program for highway projects created by Obama.

In a blow to endangered GOP Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, Trump's budget seeks $120 million to revive the mothballed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository, which is hugely unpopular in his state and was largely killed by the efforts of Harry Reid, the former Democratic senator. Heller is up for reelection next year in a state that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton.

WASHINGTON — Military spending would get the biggest boost in President Donald Trump's proposed budget. Environmental programs, medical research, Amtrak and an array of international and cultural programs — from Africa to Appalachia — would take big hits, among the many parts of the government he'd put on a crash diet.

The budget proposal out Thursday is a White House wish list; it'll be up to Congress to decide where money goes. If Trump gets his way, there will be more losers than winners among government departments and programs.

Some programs would tread water: WIC grants — money to states for health care and nutrition for low-income women, infants and children — are one example. Money for states' grants for water infrastructure projects would be held level as well.

Some others would lose everything: Trump proposes to eliminate money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the national endowments for arts and humanities, and more than a dozen other independent agencies financed by the government.

A sampling:

Winners:

—The Pentagon. Trump proposes a 10 percent increase in the massive defense budget, adding $52 billion in military spending in one year to expand personnel, equipment and capability. Another $2 billion would go to nuclear weapons.

—Homeland Security. Up 6.8 percent, or $2.8 billion more. Most of the increase, $2.6 billion, would be to help kick-start Trump's promised border wall. The president has repeatedly said Mexico would pay for the wall; Mexican officials are adamant that they won't. Trump also wants an extra $1.5 billion for more immigration jails and deportations, and $314 million to hire 1,500 immigration enforcement and border patrol agents.

—The National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the maintenance and safety of the nuclear arsenal and its research labs. The agency would grow by 11.3 percent, or $1.4 billion, so that it takes up more than half the Energy Department's budget, which would shrink overall.

—Opioid prevention and treatment. The proposal includes a $500 million increase in the Health and Human Services Department to counter the epidemic and more money for the Justice Department to combat the problem.

—School choice. The proposal includes $1.4 billion more to expand school-choice programs, bringing spending in that area to $20 billion, even as the Education Department's overall budget would be cut by $9 billion, or 13 percent.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Losers:

—The Environmental Protection Agency. It faces a 31.4 percent cut, or $2.6 billion. The plan would cut 3,200 jobs at the agency, eliminate a new plan for tighter regulations on power plants, and "zero out" programs to clean up the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay.

—Health and Human Services. It faces the largest cut in dollar terms: $12.6 billion, or 16.2 percent. The plan would cut $5.8 billion from the nearly $32 billion National Institutes of Health, the nation's premier medical research agency, bringing its total to $25.9 billion. It's not clear what research on diseases or disorders would lose the most money, although the budget plan specifically calls for the elimination of a division that focuses on global health. Already, the NIH's budget hasn't kept pace with inflation over the last decade, making it dramatically harder for scientists around the country to win money for research projects into potential new treatments or better understanding of disease.

—State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. Down 28 percent, or $10 billion. Foreign aid would be reduced, as would money to the U.N. and to multilateral development banks including the World Bank. Some foreign military grants would be shifted to loans.

—Labor Department. A more than 20 percent cut, or $2.5 billion. To be eliminated: a $434 million program that has helped more than 1 million people 55 and older find jobs, according to the department. The blueprint says the Senior Community Service Employment Program is inefficient.

—Agriculture Department. A nearly 21 percent cut, or $4.7 billion, achieved in part by cutting land acquisition in the National Forest System, rural water infrastructure, and statistical capabilities at the department. Trump also proposes a reduction in staff in county USDA offices, an idea that fell flat in Congress when President Barack Obama proposed a similar reduction.

—Transportation Department. Trump proposes a cut of nearly 13 percent, or $2.4 billion. Amtrak, local transit agencies, and rural communities that depend on federal subsidies to obtain scheduled airline service would take the brunt. Trump would eliminate subsidies for Amtrak long-distance train routes, which would most likely mean the end of those routes since they are generally not profitable. Money for the Federal Transit Administration grant program for new light rail and subway construction would be eliminated except for multiyear projects the government has already committed to help fund.

—Internal Revenue Service. After years of cuts, the IRS budget would be cut again — by $239 million from this year's spending levels. The IRS budget is down about $1 billion from its height in 2010. Since then, the agency has lost more than 17,000 employees. As a result, the chances of getting audited have rarely been so low.

—Commerce Department. A 16 percent or $1.5 billion cut. The plan would eliminate more than $250 million in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants, including a program that helps coastal communities adapt to climate change, deal with invasive species and maintain healthy water and fisheries. Also on the chopping block: the Economic Development Administration, which provides federal dollars to foster job creation and attract private investment; and the Minority Business Development Agency, which is dedicated to helping minority-owned business get off the ground and grow. The Trump administration says the two agencies duplicate work done elsewhere.

—School programs. The plan would eliminate a $1.2 billion initiative that supports before- and after-school programs, as well as summer programs.

—Independent agencies supported by tax dollars. If Trump prevails, a hefty contingent of entities will lose all federal money and be shut. Among them are the Public Broadcasting Corporation, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Chemical Safety Board, the United States Institute of Peace, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for National Community Service, and the African Development Foundation. That foundation was established by Congress and provides seed money and other support to enterprises in some 20 countries on that continent.

Yesterday, the Trump administration released its first proposed budget outline . While this is just the first step in what will inevitably be extensive negotiations with Congress, it gives a clear indication of what Trump's priorities are. First and foremost, he is focused on the military, which will see a $54 billion increase in spending, offset by cuts or wholesale elimination of programs elsewhere. Science is clearly not a priority, as it is repeatedly targeted for cuts in every agency that funds it.

But those cuts aren't evenly distributed. NASA's budget is almost entirely unscathed, although Earth sciences research funded by the agency will be cut to expand funding elsewhere. The National Science Foundation, a major source of grants for fundamental research, isn't even mentioned, so there's no sense of how it will fare. And the harshest cuts appear to be directed at biomedical research, which will see a dramatic 20 percent drop in funding for the National Institutes of Health.

NIH hammered

For fiscal year 2018, the president's budget calls for a $15.1 billion cut to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a decrease of almost 18 percent. The proposed cuts to NIH would see the research agency lose $5.8 billion, dropping its budget from $31 billion to just $25.9 billion. Structural changes make the effective cuts closer to $6.3 billion, or over 20 percent. That would mean the smallest biomedical science budget since 2002 . The real-world impact would be far greater, as biomedical research costs are increasing much faster than the rate of inflation.

Budget proposal includes cuts to organization that helps clients fight negligent landlords and domestic violence, in addition to 18 other small budget agencies

Pavita Krishnaswamy stands on the fifth floor of housing court in downtown Brooklyn and rattles off the programs that would be hurt if Donald Trump succeeds in pushing through cuts to legal services that are outlined in a budget proposal released by the White House on Thursday .

A budget proposed by the Trump administration, if accepted, may represent a hit of nearly half a billion dollars to NASA's future funding.

The White House document , which covers discretionary spending (about 27% of the national budget), calls for a $200 million decrease for the space agency, for a total of $19.1 billion.

This represents about a 1% hit to NASA's current funding level of $19.3 billion per year.

President Trump's proposal would also steamroll a 1% budget increase that's part of the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 . That bill — the first major revision of the space agency's funding and mission passed by both the House and Senate in nearly 7 years — endeavors to give NASA some $19.508 billion.

This makes the discrepancy between what the White House and Congress is proposing for NASA's future funding more than $400 million.

Over the past year or two, presidents have been less generous than Congress with NASA's budget. For instance, former President Obama in 2016 requested the space agency receive $19 billion, a difference of $300 million compared to congressional plans. Congress mostly rejected Obama's budget, giving NASA $19.3 billion.

In Trump's newly proposed budget, NASA's Earth science program — a decades-old foundation of the space agency that helps predict weather forecasts, warnings, and long-term climate shifts — would take a $102 million cut compared to actual 2017 funding levels.

These four satellites allow scientists to monitor and predict the behavior of Earth's weather, shifting climates, ocean ecosystems, and other vital aspects of our planet. They help save peoples' lives, protect wildlife, and prepare America and other nations for long-term changes.

NASA's Office of Education may also be axed to save $115 million a year. That program is designed to attract and retain "students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, disciplines" among other goals, according to NASA .

NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center

About $3.7 billion of funding is proposed for NASA's crewed exploration of deep space — ostensibly the moon and Mars — using a giant upcoming rocket, called the Space Launch System , and its Orion spaceship.

It also sets aside $1.9 billion a year for planetary science, making for an increase of about 20% compared to what Obama requested for 2017, according to The Planetary Society .

The budget also calls for NASA to launch Mars 2020, a nuclear-powered rover designed to search for signs of ancient life on Mars, and the Europa Clipper, a probe that'd study Europa — Jupiter's largest icy, ocean-hiding moon .

However, these funding levels aren't yet in effect.

A long and complex process remains before NASA knows its actual budget for fiscal year 2018, which runs from October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018.

Congress can ultimately ignore the president's budget or parts of it, as it has done in the past. But President Trump can also ignore or veto Congress' big new NASA bill — legislation that won't become a law without a presidential signature.

NOW WATCH: Astronomers discovered a solar system with 7 Earth-sized planets — and it’s the perfect place to search for alien life

President Donald Trump laid out his plans for funding a wall along the US-Mexico border as part of the White House's budget blueprint released Thursday, detailing an initial payment for the wall's design and construction and plans for a hiring spree within immigration-enforcement agencies.

The budget proposal includes a $2.6 billion investment on "tactical infrastructure" and designs and planning for the wall as well as $314 million toward hiring and training 500 border-patrol agents and 1,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in 2018.

"This investment would strengthen border security, helping stem the flow of people and drugs illegally crossing the US borders," the proposal said.

The blueprint also proposes an additional $1.5 billion toward detaining and deporting unauthorized immigrants and $15 million for a mandatory national E-Verify system meant to cut down on unauthorized employment. The program would allow for businesses to determine whether new employees are eligible to work in the country.

Yet the budget proposal appears to fall short of early cost estimates for the wall's construction and maintenance, which could total as much as $21.6 billion, according to a Department of Homeland Security report last month. Trump himself previously cited a cost of $12 billion for the wall.

Mick Mulvaney, Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the news media on Wednesday that the White House could not yet estimate the total cost of the wall or how many miles it would cover.

Some GOP lawmakers have already expressed hesitation about the wall's funding, which Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail would be provided by Mexico.

"I don't care at all as long as Mexico's paying for it — it's neither here nor there for me," Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona told The Washington Post on Wednesday. "But if we're paying for it, it's a significant concern."

Mulvaney said the funding in the budget blueprint "provides for a couple of different pilot cases," but the White House hasn't determined what type of construction a wall would consist of or where construction would start. He told ABC News' " Good Morning America " on Thursday that the budget proposal helped fulfill Trump's campaign promises.

"We took his words and turned them into numbers," Mulvaney said. "The president promised a wall — he's going to deliver it."

President Donald Trump released his preliminary 2018 budget plan last night, and it’s a bloodbath for scientific research. Not only does Trump’s plan slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, as he promised, he’s also proposing cuts to agencies that have a history of receiving broad bipartisan support — like the National Institutes of Health, one of the biggest funders of biomedical research in the world.

We get big returns on investment from publicly funded research

Investing in research and development has been one of the primary forces driving the US economy since World War II. But that advantage has been shrinking lately, as other nations — especially China — are catching up . By slashing programs funding research on...

President Trump’s proposed budget chops $6 billion, about a fifth of the total budget, from the National Institutes of Health, a move that could decimate biomedical research in a number of areas and stagger academic institutions around the country that depend on NIH grant money to keep their scientific research programs afloat.

Research funding at the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency would also take steep cuts under the budget blueprint, released early Thursday.

The budget for the National Science Foundation isn’t specifically listed but it likely falls under the category of miscellaneous agencies targeted for across-the-board cuts of nearly 10 percent.

As for the pharmaceutical industry: Trump has repeatedly promised drug makers he’ll make it easier and cheaper for them to bring new medicines to market, but he’s also counting on them to pay more for their regulatory reviews. His budget calls for hiking the fees that industry pays the Food and Drug Administration to review medical products, arguing that companies “can and should” pay their fair share. Trump aims to bring in $2 billion from these user fees in 2018, approximately double the current level.

Funding for the NIH has been a bipartisan priority for years; one of Trump’s key advisers, former Representative Newt Gingrich, has long championed that cause. It was just two years ago, in fact, that Gingrich called for doubling the NIH budget, calling health spending both a moral and a financial imperative. “It’s irresponsible and shortsighted, not prudent, to let financing for basic research dwindle,” Gingrich wrote then.

But Trump’s $1.1 trillion budget reflects new priorities in D.C.: The Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs would all get significant boosts in funding, offset by sweeping cuts across other domestic spending. The EPA and the State Department would be hardest hit, with each taking cuts of about 30 percent.

The Department of Health and Human Services comes in for a cut of more than $15 billion, or nearly 18 percent — a figure that includes additional funds for “program integrity and implementing the 21st Century Cures Act.”

Trump has talked often about the need to address the opioid crisis; his budget calls for a $500 million increase in spending to increase access to treatment and recovery services.

Trump’s budget proposal, which is slim on details, is just a blueprint; the details will be negotiated with Congress, and top Republicans have already made clear that they’re not on board with all the cuts. Just this month, Representative Tom Cole, who chairs a key appropriations committee, told STAT he hoped to boost NIH funding by as much as $2 billion this year. (The agency got its first significant budget hike in years, of $2 billion, in late 2015.)

And within hours of the blueprint’s release, Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who has also called for increasing NIH spending, issued a statement calling the president’s plan just the “first step” in a long a process. “There are many concerns with non-defense discretionary cuts,” Blunt said.

Tweet Embed:https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/842391785422880773Trump's budget is morally obscene and bad economic policy. It will cause pain to the people Trump promised to help.

Advocates for scientific research, too, fired off sharp criticism. The proposed budget would “cripple” science and technology “through short-sighted cuts,” said Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Though the details are sure to change, the budget document is important nonetheless in laying down a marker of the president’s priorities.

At the NIH, for instance, the plan calls for a “major reorganization” of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the agency. It outright abolishes the Fogarty International Center, which spends $69 million a year to support research on global health and encourage collaboration between health research institutions in the US and in other nations.

The Fogarty center pushed back immediately on Twitter with a link to a page that lays out its funding for everything from Alzheimer’s research in Colombia to HIV treatment in South Africa to an effort to model the spread of infectious diseases.

Tweet Embed:https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/842319124801961984How we invest our $70 million budget to make a difference in #GlobalHealth#research : https://t.co/iqiGiimHzI

Trump’s budget is quite vague on other spending targets in the realm of health and medicine.

There are no specifics listed for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, beyond a pledge to create a $500 million block grant fund to help states respond to their specific public health challenges. It’s not clear if that’s new funding or if it would be reallocated from elsewhere within the CDC. The budget also talks about unspecified investment in “mental health activities” such as suicide prevention.

Also mentioned in the document, without specifics: A plan to create a “federal emergency response fund” to address public health emergencies such as Zika.

The plan calls for “consolidating” the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which among other things provides evidence-based guidelines for clinicians. It’s not clear whether, or how, the agency’s work would continue.

President Donald Trump unveiled his first budget blueprint on Thursday, and to offset increases in defense spending, the President is proposing $54 billion in cuts to large parts of the federal government and popular programs big and small.

President Donald Trump officially announced his budget proposal, which included the much-feared $6.2 billion cut to HUD funding. The Office of Management and Budget released a report that shows exactly what programs will be slashed, and which will not, in the new budget proposal.

President Donald Trump's administration released its first budget on Thursday that proposes to slash spending and shrink several key federal agencies, while vastly increasing defense and homeland security.

The Environmental Protection Agency, led by Scott Pruitt, would be the hardest hit, standing to see a 31% reduction in discretionary spending if the budget passes. The State Department follows in a close second with a 29% proposed reduction.

The biggest winner in the new budget would be the Department of Defense, which stands to see a 10% spending increase, amounting to about $54 billion. The Department of Homeland Security comes in a close second, with a 7% increase.

Trump promised during the 2016 campaign to make the government smaller — and, as with any budget, it's a zero-sum game. Though Trump's own secretary of defense warned that cutting the State Department's budget would force him to "buy more ammunition," the money ultimately has to come from somewhere for Trump to avoid increasing federal debt.

NOW WATCH: 'These jobs are not coming back': Watch Mitch McConnell get confronted by an upset constituent

American health sciences are not faring well in an initial draft of President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal. Released Thursday morning, the draft proposal includes a $5.8 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health, accounting for nearly 20 percent of its entire budget. The Department of Health and Human Service,…

Nestled amid health department cuts in President Donald Trump's budget proposal released Thursday is a supposed $500 million commitment to curbing the opioid epidemic. But many addiction experts say the budget falls short, and will actually worsen the epidemic.

"I'm not optimistic," said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University in Boston.

The opioid epidemic—which kills 91 Americans every day , according to the Centers of Disease Control—was a major theme throughout Trump's campaign. The candidate pledging to stop the import of illegal drugs and improve care to prevent overdose deaths. His base includes populations most impacted by this scourge, as evidenced in the election, when Trump performed best in the counties hardest hit by the opioid epidemic.

In the budget blueprint, Trump highlighted investments in opioid addiction and substance abuse treatment. In particular, the president noted this budget includes "a $500 million increase above 2016 enacted levels to expand opioid misuse prevention efforts and to increase access to treatment and recovery services."

However, as Kolodny pointed out, it's not clear whether this is a new, additional investment, or if this is the $500 million already devoted to opioid addiction treatment programs under the 21st Century Cures Act, which President Barack Obama signed at the end of last year, and guaranteed $1 billion for these programs over the next two years. I emailed a White House press contact for clarification, but had not heard back at the time of publication.

"You're spending money on eliminating supply, and that doesn't do much about the demand."

The budget also highlighted an increased spending of $175 million in the Department of Justice's budget to target drug traffickers, and specifically noted this was to help tackle the opioid epidemic from a law enforcement angle. But cracking down on drug dealers alone won't solve the problem, according to Katharine Neill, a drug policy postdoctoral fellow at Rice University in Houston.

"That's an old 'War on Drugs' tactic that we've seen in the past and it doesn't tend to work," Neill told me. "You're spending money on eliminating supply, and that doesn't do much about the demand."

Both Neill and Kolodny told me they're even more concerned by overall changes and cuts to healthcare. The Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act will result in 24 million American losing health insurance coverage , according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would also rein in expansions for Medicaid coverage, leaving the most vulnerable Americans—many of whom are struggling with addiction—without care.

To tackle this deadly epidemic, the Trump administration needs to do more than set aside some law enforcement dollars to fighting drug dealers, the experts told me. The health care plan would need to be changed to ensure people can afford and keep insurance, the Food and Drug Administration would need to enact stricter regulations on drug marketing, and the federal government would need to expand funding for programs that include medication-assisted treatment (such as methadone), not just abstinence-based care.

But so far, the Trump administration hasn't addressed any of these other facets to slowly the toll of America's opioid crisis, and that's leaving experts troubled.

"We weren't in a great place before Trump came in and the things Trump is talking about doing, I do believe, will make the epidemic worse," said Kolodny.

The Trump administration has released its budget blueprint [PDF], and it’s a bloodbath for everything that’s not defense spending. In keeping with the budget’s general hostility to cities, transit would be hit especially hard.

The Trump budget would eliminate funding for transit expansion projects unless a funding agreement is already in place, the Washington Post reports. For transit projects that have yet to reach that stage, funding from the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program — currently budgeted for $2.3 billion annually through 2020 [ PDF ] — would no longer be available.

Many cities have lined up local funding for rail and bus rapid transit projects under the assumption that it would be complemented by federal support. Without the New Starts funding, these projects will be in jeopardy as cities and transit agencies fend for themselves, either raising taxes, cutting other local priorities, or abandoning the expansion projects altogether to compensate. Dozens of projects would be affected:

Tweet Embed:https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/842371631779569668List of all transit projects in line for federal funds in the next few years, but which would have their funding cut with Trump budget. pic.twitter.com/Hkor98PiUD

The New Starts transit program only accounts for about 5 percent of federal surface transportation spending. The Trump budget outline doesn’t touch the lion’s share of those funds, which go to state DOTs to spend as they wish — mainly on roads.

Trump’s budget would also eliminate funding for TIGER, a smaller $500 million program initiated by the Obama administration to provide direct access to federal transportation funds for cities, transit agencies, and other local entities. Relative to overall federal spending, TIGER has paid for more walking, biking, and transit projects, such as Indianapolis’s Cultural Trail and Tampa’s Riverwalk. At Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s confirmation hearing in January, she said Congress members told her it was their favorite program.

Eliminating federal subsidies for transit has long been a goal of hard-right ideologues — but in the past these attempts have failed in Congress. Swing votes in the suburban ring of major cities that count on transit — including some Republican districts — have helped fend off the worst attacks. They will have to be mobilized again to stop this one.

More recommended reading today: Systemic Failure breaks down Ford CEO Mark Field’s assertion that fuel economy standards will cost a million jobs. And Price Tags writes that some residents of Sandusky, Ohio, are upset about plans to transform an industrial pier into park space — because 40 waterfront parking spaces will be eliminated.

NOW WATCH: A look inside the high-speed trains Amtrak will start using in 2021

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday said the city would suffer huge cuts to a wide array of services and capital funding, jeopardizing everything from housing inspections and senior services to transit projects and counter-terrorism efforts, under President Donald Trump's proposed federal budget.

As expected, President Trump’s proposed budget is a nightmare for science, the environment, and parts of the technology industry. Welcome to the future, where our long national nightmare may not even have the funds to keep chugging along.

President Donald Trump proposed a $1.1 trillion budget. It would increase defense spending by $54 billion but other departments would see huge spending cuts. Funding for 19 agencies would be eliminated . Here are the biggest winners and losers. The budget proposal out Thursday is a White House wish list; it'll be up to Congress to decide where the money goes.

President Donald Trump released his budget, which includes several cuts, such as a 13.2% decrease to HUD's budget. But other agencies, like Neighborworks America, are defunded entirely by the budget proposal. The agency responded by pointing out its achievements for the 2016 fiscal year.

On Wednesday, a federal court in Hawaii granted a temporary restraining order preventing President Trump's executive order restricting travel from six Muslim-majority countries from going to into effect. Though the ruling was completely predictable (a Maryland court issued a similar order a few hours later), Trump responded as he often does after losing in court: by attacking the legitimacy of

This article originally appeared on www.rollingstone.com: Trump Thinks the Constitution 'Makes Us Look Weak'

President Donald Trump has proposed halting funding for rural clean water initiatives and reducing county-level staff, for a 21% drop in discretionary spending at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), according to a White House budget document.

The $4.7 billion in cuts would leave USDA with a budget of $17.9 billion after cutting some statistical and rural business services and encouraging private sector conservation planning. Farm groups warned that farmers and rural communities could suffer.

The budget proposal would save $498 million by eliminating a rural water and wastewater loan and grant program that helps fund clean water and sewer systems in communities with fewer than 10,000 people.

Other areas targeted for cuts include staffing at county-level USDA service centers.

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), the country's largest organization representing farmers, said cuts to statistical services could hurt members.

"That's a big concern because a lot of farmers and growers rely on USDA's statistical capabilities to make a lot of marketing and risk management decisions and planting decisions," said John Newton, AFBF director of market intelligence.

The budget proposal did not give details of which services could be cut.

Greg Fogel, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said cuts to rural development work could harm businesses in rural areas as these programs had created jobs and helped businesses survive.

The White House also said it would eliminate the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program, which donates U.S. agricultural commodities to food-deficit countries. The program, which had $182 million earmarked in the fiscal-year 2017 USDA budget, "lacks evidence that it is being effectively implemented to reduce food insecurity," the document said.

The plans for USDA spending were part of Trump's budget blueprint, a broad outline of spending proposals for the fiscal year ahead.

The blueprint does not cover "mandatory" spending established by law, like farm subsidies, only "discretionary" programs where lawmakers can adjust spending.

The Trump White House has said it plans to release a traditional full budget in mid-May.

The budget plan calls for $6.2 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, about $150 million less than budgeted in fiscal 2016. Under former President Barack Obama, the program was reduced by $273 million between fiscal 2015 and 2016.

The USDA oversees agriculture, rural communities and nutritional programs, including funding for school lunches. The agency also publishes closely watched global farming production statistics.

Strictly speaking, the “skinny budget” that the White House published on Thursday isn’t a budget at all. It says nothing about roughly three-quarters of over-all federal spending, which goes to mandatory outlays such as Social Security, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt. It doesn’t include any projections for the deficit. And a Presidential budget isn’t binding. Ultimately, Congress sets spending levels. As Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, said on Thursday morning, “this is just the very start” of the budget process.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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By eviscerating federal funding of science, this proposed budget pays for a world where the only infrastructure is megacities connected by Fury Roads. The post Trump's Budget Would Break American Science, Today and Tomorrow appeared first on WIRED .

Several noteworthy Republican lawmakers signaled Thursday that they are so far unimpressed with President Donald Trump's first budget proposal, a plan that would slash popular services and programs and give a $54 billion boost to defense spending.

Trump's proposal has received mixed reviews in part for its deep cuts to humanities and arts programs, and services to disabled children and older Americans.

Members of Trump's Cabinet, including White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said programs like Meals on Wheels — the public service that provides hot meals to the elderly — "sound great," but it and other anti-poverty programs are "not showing any results."

The deep cuts are unsurprising. Trump has spent his campaign and the early months of his presidency touting promises to boost military spending and slash what he considers wasteful government spending. Still, Trump's moves have not gone unnoticed among Republicans.

"American's leadership on the global stage is indispensable," Rubio said. "I will be working to ensure Congress' funding priorities allow America to play this role."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, took a swipe at the budget's heavy focus on defense spending while cutting funds at agencies like the State Department.

"These increases in defense come at the expense of national security, soft power, and other priorities," he said.

"I look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress and President Trump to create a budget that is fiscally responsible, makes our country safer and preserves wise investments in our future," Graham added.

"We need a strong reform budget that will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of foreign assistance. And we can achieve this without undermining vital US economic and national security interests," Royce said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While he has swallowed a big budget cut and had the White House veto his chosen deputy, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is avoiding a public conflict with U.S. President Donald Trump over his department's budget, six current and former U.S. officials said on Thursday.

President Trump’s “America First” budget released on Thursday that calls for steep cuts to the State Department and Environmental Protection Agency was called by some Republican lawmakers as a pie-in-the-sky wish list that has little hope of coming out of Congress in tact.

The Trump administration recently submitted its 2018 budget proposal to Congress . As predicted, there are deep cuts to virtually every department. Some of the hardest hit ? The EPA (down 31%), the State Department (down 29%), and the USDA (down 21%), and the Department of Health and Human Services (down 18%).

Trump’s proposed budget outline isn’t exactly being met with open arms in Congress , partially because he wants to end funding for so many agencies and programs . Here are those agencies, along with a useful tool to see how other agencies would be affected.

A penthouse at Trump Park Avenue owned by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, of which the president is the exclusive beneficiary, just hit the market asking $35 million, according to public records.

Trump transferred the unit, located at 502 Park Avenue, to the trust in January, but he has been trying to sell the unit for quite a while. He first listed it in 2008 for $45 million, then raised the ask to $51 million after a renovation, before dropping it back down to $31 million. He brought it back to the market in 2013 for $45 million, but ultimately took down the listing in March 2016, when it was asking $35 million.

Out of all the federal agencies that received budget plans from President Donald Trump yesterday, NASA fared pretty well . The space agency is only facing a 0.8 percent cut in its overall budget — a relatively mild change compared to the Environmental Protection Agency, which could see its funding slashed by 31 percent.

Packed within NASA’s small budget decrease are some pretty sizable cuts

But packed within NASA’s small budget decrease are some pretty sizable cuts. A few major upcoming missions are canceled, and NASA’s entire education program, which is responsible for outreach and grants, is eliminated. The budget request also proposes wasting technologies already in space.

The Mortgage Bankers Association explained President Donald Trump’s proposed budget shows housing is not a priority for the administration. The MBA explains it’s not just the cuts to HUD that show the president’s focus. The lack of housing direction in the budget can be just as telling as the funding cuts.

When the White House released its unconscionable budget on Wednesday, which includes plans to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, my first thought was of militants destroying statues with sledgehammers in Iraq’s Mosul Museum—of the extermination of culture as a vile form of propaganda. The argument for the sweeping cuts, which also include the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is that they pave the way for a fifty-four-billion-dollar increase in defense spending. In 2016, the N.E.A.’s budget was a hundred and forty eight million dollars, a mere .003 per cent of the federal budget, which is forty-six cents per capita. You pay three cents more for a first-class stamp. Trump might as well have named his budget “America First, Art Last.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The new administration has big plans for space research and travel. It seems however, that NASA has some serious belt tightening to do, given that the 2017 budget proposal released by the White House will see $200 million cut from the space agency’s current funding.

The budget would basically allot NASA $19.1 billion for the 2018 fiscal year. That’s $200 million less than the $19.3 the agency received last year. NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot did not seem surprised by the White House announcement in the statement he released .

“While more detailed budget information will be released in May, we have received a top line budget number for the agency as part of an overall government budget roll out of more than $19 billion,” Lightfoot said in the statement. “This is in line with our funding in recent years, and will enable us to effectively execute our core mission for the nation, even during these times of fiscal constraint.”

Credit: NASA

Lightfoot expressed his confidence that NASA will be able to continue with its work, sustain research, and develop technologies that will broaden the agency’s capabilities to send humans deeper into space, even given the funding cut in the proposed budget.

Implications for NASA

While NASA isn’t facing budgetary cuts as drastic as other federal agencies, the cuts do have implications on NASA’s Earth science and education programs.

“Overall science funding is stable, although some missions in development will not go forward and others will see increases,” Lightfoot said. “We remain committed to studying our home planet and the universe, but are reshaping our focus within the resources available to us — a budget not far from where we have been in recent years, and which enables our wide ranging science work on many fronts.”

Under the proposal, the Earth science division would take a $102 million cut compared to what it received in 2017. The budget would effectively end several Earth science initiatives, such as NASA’s carbon monitoring program and NASA’s involvement in the DSCOVR program .

Some of the other notable missions that are up for cancellation under the new budget proposal includes NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission and a mission to land on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. NASA’s education program, which the proposal described as redundant to other parts of the agency, would now be completely be scrapped. The agency’s human spaceflight program, fortunately, would mostly stay on track.

Despite these defunded programs and missions, the new budget request does draw focus to other NASA initiatives, such as commercial space travel.

“The budget supports our continued leadership in commercial space, which has demonstrated success through multiple cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station, and is on target to begin launches of astronauts from U.S. soil in the near future,” Lightfoot said in the statement.

Credit: NASA

According to the proposal, NASA will continue to support and expand private-public partnerships that hope to grow civilian space travel. It seems that the new budget would be opening options for NASA to engage in “collaboration with industry” in terms of running the space station and developing deep-space habitats.

The post NASA Poised to Lose $200 Million in Funding Under the Trump Administration appeared first on Futurism .

At the outset of the Trump presidency, there is considerable uncertainty around what the new administration might mean for tech policy, a deeply complex set of issues that were largely out of view on the campaign trail.

As a candidate, Trump did not articulate a tech policy agenda, though he stressed the need for a tougher posture on cybersecurity.

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The last Republican president, George W. Bush, branded himself a compassionate conservative . In many ways Bush certainly did not live up to that principle, but he at least knew to pay lip service to the notion that conservatives should care for the needy while also tending to

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